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About the Book

The Last Lecture: The Legacy Edition Enhanced eBook

The classic bestseller, now updated and presented as a truly immersive multimedia reading experience. New features include:

Video clips from Pausch's lecture throughout the book, providing readers with the complete reading and viewing experience

A new foreword by Pausch's widow, Jai Pausch

The book's audio introduction read by Randy Pausch

Brand-new photos

Never-before-seen video with the book's coauthor, Jeffrey Zaslow

Memorable clips from the ABC News special with Diane Sawyer

Pausch's commencement speech to the Carnegie Mellon Class of 2008

An excerpt from Zaslow's convocation speech to the Carnegie Mellon Class of 2014

A new "Your Last Lecture" section with questions that help readers put the book's message into action in their own lives

In this enhanced eBook Legacy Edition, readers will be able to experience, firsthand, the energy and love of life that made Randy Pausch so inspiring. They will also be encouraged to think more deeply about how they can apply its messages in their own lives.

The Last Lecture goes beyond the now-famous lecture to inspire us all to live each day of our lives with purpose and joy

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

— Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave — "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" — wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.